


the snake of silicon valley

by gryphonfeather



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Filming, LinkedIn, M/M, Social Media, Tom Riddle-centric, didn't think that'd be a tag yet and I was right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25457782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryphonfeather/pseuds/gryphonfeather
Summary: Tom Riddle has an ambitious goal (what else is new) - he is going to crush it at business school and then never have to work for anyone else ever again. Leveraging the social media platform LinkedIn is going to be his ticket out of here.aka this is a university social media au where business student Tom is going to meet art student Harry and they’re going to be good for each other.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 2
Kudos: 69





	1. the first video: honesty

A camera turns on. It starts out pointing, somewhat crookedly, at the joint between a gray wall and a ceiling, the kind with the patterned stucco that looks like raised spiders or lipstick prints. A little bit of water damage is visible in the few seconds it takes for the view to be repositioned facing a desk. The desk itself is painfully clean, organized down to the right angles between a pad of bright blue sticky notes and a light yellow legal pad, but it is clearly a desk in a quite average dorm room. Steps are heard rounding the desk, and the owner of the desk comes into view. As he sits down, several things become obvious - he is classically handsome, with dark, wavy hair, high cheekbones, and a defined jawline; and his meticulous nature stretches beyond just desktop organization, for his collared shirt is freshly ironed, and he makes sure to straighten out his cuffs and run his fingers along the hair in front of his face to catch flyaways before glancing up at the camera briefly through his lashes. 

His storm-gray eyes flash intensely, once, before the young man looks back down at his hands and glances over his notes again.

When he squares his shoulders and raises his chin, a polite smile graces his lips. He begins to speak in a low, measured voice. 

“Hello, my name is Tom Riddle. I’m going to be covering the top principles you need to get ahead in business, and today’s topic is honesty.”

“I’m going to start with a truth.” He ducks his head somewhat self-consciously, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. Briefly. “This is the first video I’ve done.” Clearing his throat, he sits back up and flashes a bright smile, showing straight teeth. “However, everyone has to start somewhere. In that spirit, let’s talk about how being honest about your skills can help you land a job…”

-X-

Tom zones out as he half-listens to himself drone on. He’s heard that it’s normal to hate the sound of your own voice in a recording, and he… commiserates? He doesn’t _hate_ his voice, but it does begin to grate after a while. 

He rewinds the video to the beginning, sets his phone down, and watches his intro yet again. The fingers of his right hand drum on the desk, one after the other, speeding up. _Ba-da-da-dum. Ba-da-da-dum._

The video is a little shaky, a little blurry, and the lighting is awful. It is quite obviously an amateur recording. Tom sighs. There’s not much he can do about that, now can he? He has no video editing skills, and don’t most of those programs need a fancy computer and like, a bajillion dollars? He wouldn’t change his script - that was as good as he could get it - but the execution is so much better in his head. 

Switching apps to LinkedIn, Tom selects his profile from the top left. 

  
He had briefly considered including his full middle name when installing the app, as there were surely fewer Thomas Marvolos than there were Thomas Riddles, but he had hesitated. Marvolo was just such a weird name, even among the more elite and eccentric of his classmates. Tom wanted to stand out on his own merits, draw attention because of his skills and not because of a name that he didn’t choose for himself. Tom knows firsthand how much a poor first impression can stick for years and impact how a person interacts with him. So he stuck with the good old Thomas M. and is in the process of resigning himself to being one of over five hundred Thomas Riddles, which was actually a slight improvement over the seven hundred Tom Riddles in the Greater London area. 

Shaking his head, Tom refocuses. Pulling up a new post, he keeps his caption simple. 

“I’m creating a new video series: Principles for Succeeding in Business. Check out today’s installment, on honesty. #business #principles #videooftheday”

Attaching the ten-minute video, Tom holds his breath, his finger hovering above the post button, then taps it, letting his breath go with a _whoosh_. 

There. It was posted. He did it.

One more step down, one hundred and forty-five to go.

Day-to-day classes aren’t exactly a challenge for him, but he is only a sophomore, he muses as he pushes his chair back with a squeak and stands up. So far, his business degree has been less of an intellectual challenge and more of an exercise in self-motivation. Tom has had to make goals for himself and hold himself to them - he scoffs. What else is new? He just… he thought it might have been more different from high school in that regard. 

Yes, there are stark differences between Cole High School, which had been the furthest thing from a preparatory school, and Hogwarts, which is a prestigious institution full of the so-called “cream of the crop.” Tom’s thoughts drift to his old Headmaster, Dumbledore, who had held Tom back in every way he could, and Tom shuts the door of his dorm behind him a little harder than necessary as he swings his canvas bag onto his shoulder. He remembers the higher maths A-level classes where the man had waited for anyone else to answer a question before turning resignedly to Tom and picking his answer to pieces, the blatant accusations of cheating, the refusal to give test results except in person in office hours where he could mutter disappointedly about wasted potential and how “idle hands make the Devil’s work”… Tom had counted himself lucky that by his last year, the man wasn’t a regular teacher and had only substituted for Professor Lupin when the man was too ill to come into classes. But… _damn it,_ there he goes again letting the stupid old goat color his thoughts. Tom shakes himself a little. “I made it out,” he mutters under his breath after glancing around to make sure no other students are within hearing distance. “I’m out of there.” _Don’t let Dumbledore take anything more from me._ The past is the past, and the future is bright. 

Tom walks out onto campus, head held high. He’s going to make it big, and he knows it.


	2. a normal day in sophomore year

Tom puts the blue felt-tip pen down at the end of the row. All his colored pens have been laid out in order so that no two similar colors sit next to each other. Pink and red are separated by green, which also means green is not next to the blue he’d just set down. 

Rolling his shoulders back and flexing his hand, the lanky brunet considers for a second and then straightens his neck, which audibly cracks. Tom winces. Rewriting his notes for Marketing Psychology isn’t taking as long as he’d thought, but he should be better about shifting position more often. _Can’t afford a chiropractor yet_. He takes a swig of water from the university-branded bottle he’d been so graciously given at one of the many student union tabling events (they bought these insipid things with _his_ tuition, the least they could do was give him one… or five), and picks up the orange pen. Switching to a new color for a new topic’s notes helps him group notes visually, playing to his near-photographic memory. “I know the answer is in red on a left hand page, three-quarters of the way down,” lessens the time for recall dramatically. 

Not that Tom is struggling with grades, but he can’t afford to slip up - he’d never be able to afford Hogwarts tuition on his own, let alone room and board. There are only so many on-campus part-time jobs one person can have and remain the president of the Student Success Club while maintaining multiple study groups and still, you know, going to college classes. And sleeping. Tom hadn’t understood the appeal of coffee or energy drinks in high school, had turned up his nose at the concept of possible caffeine addiction like some of his classmates, but considering present circumstances he has been known to partake in a Red Bull or two. 

Once he finishes the section on television audiences and demographics, he closes the spiral notebook and stows it in the messenger bag beside his chair, then gathers up his pens, placing them in an inner pocket. Leaving the water bottle out, he grabs a granola bar and idly munches on it. 

The phone comes out.

Tom has most of his WhatsApp group chats muted, except for the club leadership one, which contains no new messages. 

LinkedIn… Tom sighs, and a small rueful smile pulls at the corners of his lips. (A library staffer passing his table glances up and drops their stack of books at the sight. Tom does not notice.) LinkedIn remains a haven for smugness and faked authenticity, people grasping for notice and begging for jobs. These are Tom’s people. 

He cracks his knuckles and gets to work.

He checked on his feed this morning, mostly reading articles and posts, catching up on the day’s trends. Now he works his real magic. 

He starts with congratulating a senior in the program flaunting their job placement after graduation, going beyond the basic “Congrats, Marcus!” to “Congratulations on the position at Firebolt, Inc - I’m sure your diligence will serve you well.” Making himself memorable. 

He responds with a heart emoji to one of those inane polls, “Would you rather work from the office, work from home, or both?” _Paper-thin excuses for high engagement numbers, the lot of them._

A bad meme, a self-aggrandizing article from Hogwarts about the new Ravenclaw medical school library, a rant about American companies moving manufacturing overseas… ah, there. A snappy five-line “positivity” message about not being defined by one’s job title that’s trending, according to a quick check that likes are higher than the author’s original follower count. _People lap that kind of thing up, apparently_. Tom takes his time to craft an appropriate response, one that doesn’t sound preachy, but still adds insight from his perspective to the original post. He considers the saying about rising tides helping people, then shrugs. _I don’t know how applicable that saying is if we can choose which tides we want to be on_. 

After a solid half an hour of mutual back-slapping bullshit, Tom finishes up with an original post, as actual content creation can’t be beat for growing a brand. Blah, blah continual learning, staying humble, buzzword, hashtag entrepreneur, post. 

Before closing out the app, Tom switches to the “My Network” tab and requests connections from all the recommendations the app’s pulled. People who also attend Hogwarts, alumni, other people in the Greater London area, people who know people you know, and a partridge in a pear tree. 

There.

Done.

Stowing his water bottle in the outer side pocket, Tom flips his bag closed, slings it over his shoulder, and makes his way out of the library and into the… he would say sunshine, but it’s four o’clock pm in England, so he makes his way into the clouds and slight drizzle. He tugs on one end of his green wool scarf and loops it once around his neck. The physics and mathematics building is halfway across campus, but it only makes sense to hold the statistics study group near the classroom if they purposely scheduled it so class is directly afterwards. 

Tom lets a grin cross his face as he strides faster along the damp pathway and starts to recall what he knows of Gaussian distributions. He does so enjoy showing up the research engineering majors who are required to take this class - they may have fancy graphing calculators, but Tom actually understands the material. _Take that, Cormac_. 

Life is good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it’s been a while, but I’ve finally found both time and inspiration to write again!!  
> Don’t forget to check my [tumblr](https://gryphonfeather.tumblr.com/) for updates and fic recs!

**Author's Note:**

> I was managing my LinkedIn profile irl, scrolling down the feed full of people discussing their brand and making meaningful connections and the value of entrepreneurship, and I had a brain flash - Tom Riddle would absolutely make a killing on this platform. I believe the actual thought was, "Tom would win at LinkedIn." So this fic was born!  
> Bear with me through any image formatting issues, I beg of you - this is my first time incorporating images into fic.  
> Lmk what you think!


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